CNBC’s Steve Liesman torched President Trump’s stiff tariffs as “insanity” in a rant that he claimed put his job on the community in danger.
The longtime enterprise journalist on Tuesday tore into Trump after the president threatened to hike tariffs on Canada’s aluminum and metal imports to 50% until the neighboring nation agreed to grow to be the “51st state.”
“I’m going to say this at risk of my job, Kelly, but what President Trump is doing is insane,” Liesman, CNBC’s senior economics reporter, advised anchor Kelly Evans.
“It is about the eighth reason we’ve had for the tariffs, and now he’s saying he’s putting 50% tariffs on Canada unless they agree to become the 51st state. That is insane.”
Trump had threatened earlier that day in a put up on Reality Social to double the tariffs on Canada’s metal and aluminum merchandise, in addition to enhance taxes on automobile imports to “permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada.”
“The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” Trump wrote within the put up on Tuesday. “This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear.”
But the aluminum and metal taxes took impact Wednesday morning on the unique 25% charge.
Liesman nodded at a headline within the Wall Road Journal — “The Trade War Will Pound Stocks,” an opinion piece by Greg Jensen, co-chief funding officer at Bridgewater Associates, who argued that hefty tariffs will harm US property.
“The gentleman from Bridgewater is 100% right,” Liesman stated. “We need massive amounts of capital if we want to fund our deficits, pay for the things we want to pay for, sell our bonds and have high stock prices, and it seems as if this administration is doing everything it can to chase the foreign capital away.”
He argued that Trump’s “insane” warnings to Canada are proof that the president is unrestricted this time round in workplace.
“It’s very different from [Trump’s] first administration, where there were people around him who seemed to — I don’t know what the word is — but seemed to smooth over some of the edges,” Liesman stated.
“The other thing that’s not talked about, Kelly, is what’s going on within the administration in terms of how they’re treating the Constitution and laws,” he added.
Evans tried to save lots of the dialog, saying with fun: “Well, we can go into insanity as a strategy.”
However Liesman retorted: “Insanity is not a strategy, I’m sorry.”
